It’s a boy and it’s a girl: Twin baby pandas born in Shaanxi

Twin giant pandas were born on Tuesday at the Qinling Panda Research Center in Shaanxi Province, the center announced, marking another sign of progress for the country’s iconic animal.

• One of the twins is female, the other male, making them “dragon and phoenix twins” (龙凤胎 lóngfèng tāi) or what is sometimes called a “pigeon pair” in English.
• Their mother was Qínqín 秦秦, who was born at the Research Center in 2013 and raised in captivity. Qinqin earlier gave birth to a pair of female cubs in 2020.

China declared last year that pandas are no longer endangered, though they are still vulnerable: The wild population of the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) almost doubled to roughly 1,800 after three decades of government-led recovery efforts, while the number of pandas in captive-breeding programs around the world has also nearly doubled to 633.

• A giant panda named Èr Shùn 二顺 gave birth to twin cubs just a few weeks earlier at a zoo in the southwest municipality of Chongqing.
• The population of the giant panda’s lesser-known cousin, the red panda (Ailurus fulgens), is a little stronger, with roughly 10,000 estimated to still live in the wild, but that number is also going down.

China’s unofficial national animal has won people’s hearts in and out of the country: Some scientists believe that their “snub noses, generous cheeks, and toddling gaits” may activate the same neural circuits that respond to human infants, while clips of their playful, clumsy antics have captivated audiences on the internet.

• Last month, Hong Kong mourned the death of Ān Ān 安安, the world’s oldest male giant panda in captivity, after his health declined over his last few weeks. The bamboo-eating star of the city’s famous Ocean Park has now been resurrected in the metaverse.
• Bing Dwen Dwen (冰墩墩 Bīng Dūn Dūn), a cuddly, spaced-out panda in a onesie, was the official mascot for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in February: Some desperate fans camped out overnight to buy merchandise, while scalpers racked the price up to $500 on the secondary market.

The black-and-white bears are also important goodwill ambassadors for China: Panda diplomacy, the practice of sending giant pandas as state gifts to other countries, dates back at least to the Tang dynasty. But the most well known instance was when former Chinese premier Zhōu Ēnlái 周恩来 gifted American first lady Patricia Nixon two pandas in February 1972 during her historic visit along with her husband, Richard, to Beijing, which began the process of opening diplomatic relations between China and the United States.

• Former Chinese president Hú Jǐntāo 胡锦涛 announced the lease of two pandas during a visit to Japan in May 2008, saying, “Giant pandas are very popular among the Japanese, and they are a symbol of the friendly ties between Japan and China.”
• China sent a pair of pandas named Fú Wá 福娃 (renamed Xìng Xìng 兴兴) and Fèng Yí 凤仪 (renamed Jìng Jìng 靓靓) to Malaysia in 2014 to mark the 40th anniversary of diplomatic ties, but their arrival was delayed following the disappearance of flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The pandas were placed at the National Zoo of Malaysia a month later.
• In 2017, Chinese President Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 gifted Finland two pandas named Lumi and Pyry, who arrived the following year on a 15-year loan, after the Nordic country signed a joint declaration endorsing the one-China policy.
• That same year, two pandas, Cǎi Táo 彩陶 and Hú Chūn 湖春, arrived in Jakarta to celebrate the 60th anniversary of bilateral relations between China and Indonesia.
• In 2019, Xi leased two giant pandas, Rú Yì 如意 and Dīng Dīng 丁丁, to Russia’s Moscow Zoo on an official state visit, where Xi stated: “Over the past six years we have met almost 30 times…Putin is my best friend and a good colleague.”

But in lieu of the 50th anniversary of Nixon’s visit, escalating tensions between China and the United States have driven some to take a critical eye to the cute, fluffy animals:

• “Pandas born in the United States deserve to stay in our country,” South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace wrote in a statement in February, after she tried to pass an amendment to the America Competes Act to send a message to China during the Winter Games that “some of their aggression is not OK.” The proposal was not taken up.